Mesa bank manager convicted of stealing $655,000 from vault, ATMs at her branch

PHOENIX – A Mesa woman was found guilty last week of stealing $655,000 from the bank branch she managed, authorities announced.

Brooke McDonough, 35, stole the cash from her bank’s vault and ATMs between June 2021 and February 2022, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona. She managed the unnamed Mesa bank branch from 2020 to early 2022.

On Dec. 11, a federal jury convicted her on one count of embezzlement by bank employee, six counts of transactional money laundering and five counts of structuring transactions to evade reporting requirements.

“Significant trust is placed in business leaders in our community,” U.S. Attorney Timothy Courchaine said in a press release Wednesday. “When those individuals take advantage of their leadership position to embezzle large amounts of money from the business they were entrusted to lead, our office will hold them accountable.”

No information about sentencing in the case was made available.

What did Mesa woman do with cash she stole from bank?

Prosecutors said McDonough deposited most of the stolen money into her personal accounts through ATMs at multiple bank locations.

She kept the deposits at under $10,000 each so the banks were not required to file Currency Transaction Reports to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Office of Inspector General and the Mesa Police Department handled the investigation into the case.

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